Today is Sunday.
For the first time they took me out into the sun today.
And for the first time in my life I was aghast
that the sky is so far away
          and so blue
          and so vast
              I stood there without a motion.
Then I sat on the ground with respectful devotion
leaning against the white wall.
Who cares about the waves with which I yearn to roll
Or about strife or freedom or my wife right now.
The soil, the sun and me...
I feel joyful and how.

"And then taking from his wallet
an old schedule of trains, he'll say
I told you when I came I was a stranger
I told you when I came I was a stranger."
                                        --- Leonard Cohen

I'm the most surprised person on the planet.
Your coming to see me off at the airport
has my mind scratching glass seeking words.
Why is it that in this relationship,
you seem to have gotten all the speaking parts?
You're well aware that I have loved you
for the better part of two years,
bottling that emotion, afraid to pop the cork.
Your eyes implore mine, rotating like
a searchlight over Baghdad seeking
the stealth laying carnage to your heart.
Twice in the last week you've made it evident,
the Grail was mine, but for the drinking ---
That and finding a shorthand for adultry.
I'm guilty courting the love of a married woman,
made worse, you're here at my departure
telling me we aren't free to choose who we love.
I know my desire must die of thirst,
so I turn, boarding pass in hand,
the last words I ever hear from you,
Write me! --- Thirty-five years later I have.

Poems
are to be quietly
silently whispered
over fires made
out in the chilly cold

Shared, with shifty eyes,
trembling fingers,
trembling voice,
trembling lips,
shaking hands

Reverently whispered
so that the wind
catches the words,
tosses them away
so no one may ever
misuse them again

Poems are to be shared
hiding away
from the world

Toss away sheltering umbrella,
Seek to samba triumphant in the rain.
Edit dramatic doldrums from the novella,
Relate an easy tongue of the urbane.

Call a friend as helpful lifeline,
Castle Queenside for defense,
Debate the speed of light with Einstein,
Let love be your sixth sense.

Swim out through the breakers,
Surf the hurricane back home,
Reject the quackery of fakers,
Let rain cloud be your geodesic dome.

Vilify politics of standstill,
Wink the lowlands of the moon.
Pitch an idea to the gristmill,
Sing impromptu to typhoon.

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard

Humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you’re flush pride keeps

you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house

Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it’s there and sitting down

on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity

i hate you

I'd love to love you
and hold
your hand.
We could
pick sunflowers and
I'd put them
in your hair
while you made faces
at the sun.
We'd crunch
through orange leaves
and rub red
noses together
to keep
warm.
I'd make you
hot chocolate
and wrap you up
in my heaviest
quilt under the stars,
and in the
morning
we'd find ourselves
wound up
tightly
and so very content.
But only if you'd
let me love you.